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August 2007

During a conversation regarding the troop surge, the Iraq war, the multiple failures of strategy and the lying and deception amidst Bush's belligerent communications strategy of "You're with me or against me," Jon said

Isn't leadership... bringing along a country, NOT chastising those who disagree and making them feel like pussies?

The reason I find that particularly profound is that it is exactly the attitude necessary for leadership or governance in an open and transparent world. If the world is viewed systemically, it seems to me that ultimately there is no "other." If we're fragmented (in the postmodernist sense), then it's our fragmented selves and the disparate areas they inhabit that eventually reform a multiply-threaded community.

I was a participant at on a Yi-Tan podcast, and used this term. Some people asked for more:Kool-Aid-ism

As we come of age, we learn to differentiate ourselves from our parents and other authority figures, but we also learn how to reconnect with them. Given major public events, generational cultures often have a pivotal point of shared experience.

Although it’s been said that Generation X has had no such experience, I
believe otherwise. The Baby Boomers had Nationalism vs. Jingoism, and
Generation X has had Citizenship vs. Kool-Aid-ism.

For the Boomers, Viet Nam was the question: Would you go? Would you
NOT go? If you didn’t go, would you protest? Leave the country? What
is a hero? Where are your national duties? You may have relatives who
served or even died during World War II; how can you oppose your
government’s call to duty - is that disrespectful of their sacrifice?

Generation X has had a similar pivotal issue: Will you work in
corporation? Will you refuse? How far into your career will you
continue to work in a corporation? How long will you stay with one firm
in one job? Will you start your own business? How should you support
yourself; what role should your livelihood play in your life? What
about your family? Where are your obligations? How should you effect
change?

The degree to which (US-raised) Generation Xers bought into to the
framework of unfettered capitalism is as much a litmus test as the
degree to which Boomers bought into the framework of unfettered
nationalism. It even has the same polarizing issues: If you’re going
to do it, do it right! (Be much more aggressive in Viet Nam; make a lot
of money in the corporate world.) If you object to the powerful
treating you badly, then you’d better not do the same thing yourself
when you have power (“Make love, not war”; “First, do no evil”).

(For those who are unfamiliar, “Drinking the Corporate Kool-Aid” is an expression
often used to mean the degree to which an employee buys into the goals
and objectives as stated by the executives in the firm they work.)